Chapter 6
A Quiet Conversation
Milo doesn’t speak to anyone for the rest of the morning.
He practices alone behind the juggler’s tent, where the ropes cast long, thin shadows across the dirt.
I watch him from a distance, pretending I’m only passing by, but really, I am studying the hollow around him the way a doctor studies a wound that refuses to heal.
He moves beautifully—flawlessly—but his body is the only thing alive about him.
No sparks rise from his focus or strain.
Even frustration usually produces a tiny red spark, but Milo shows nothing.
By midday, I find myself lingering near the carousel, watching him through the gaps in the tents. He notices me. He sets his juggling pins down, and walks toward me with quiet, steady steps.
“You’re watching me,” he says simply.
I swallow. “You move very well.”
“I’ve practiced a long time,” he replies. He tilts his head. “You look curious.”
“I am,” I say quietly. “Because you feel like a silence. Everyone else hums or echoes, even when they’re alone. But you don't.”
He looks down at his hands, his fingers flexing as if trying to remember a feeling that used to be there. “Does that bother you?”
“No,” I say without thinking. “Not at all.”
He looks surprised. “It frightens you, but it doesn’t bother you.”
He is right. The hollow terrifies me, but he does not. Milo confesses that he remembers remembering Joy, but he doesn't remember the feeling itself—only the shape of where it once belonged. I search for a flicker of Amber nostalgia in his eyes, but find only a lightless vacuum.
“Can I ask you something?” he says, his gaze flicking to the jar I carry under my shawl. “You said you gather Joy. You can see it. But you can’t make it?”
I freeze as Madame Lys’s words echo in my mind: You were shaped to never claim Joy for yourself.
“No. I can’t,” I tell him.
“That sounds lonely too,” he murmurs. My breath hitches. He recognizes my landscape of loneliness.
He asks if giving people Joy takes something from me. I admit that it makes me weak, always costing a little at a time.
“Then don’t give it to me,” he says firmly. “I don’t want to take more from someone who already gives too much.”
No one has ever said that to me before. They worry about the circus or the show, but never about me. When I tell him that sometimes giving isn't about being asked, he looks at me with eyes like the quiet surface of a winter lake.
“It’s strange,” he whispers. “When I stand near you… the emptiness feels less heavy.”
It isn't a bright spark, but it's the closest thing to one Milo has felt in years.
“Stay close,” I whisper back.
The circus breathes differently now, as if it senses the start of something it was not built to survive. I began to hum the melody of the Wonderhouse lullaby, the words barely more than a breath:
“Close your eyes, don’t let it go
If your heart feels small and cold
We will warm it soft and slow
With a story made of gold.”
Milo didn't say anything, but for the first time, his shadow didn't look quite so heavy.